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| I need advice as soon as possible about a drainage problem we are having with our neighbors in a small town in rural Iowa. In 1977 there was an abandoned culvert under the road from one property to a vacant lot across the road. The family that lived there filled the culvert in (culvert was located on the city's right of way). In 1988 we bought the lot and built our home. When doing landscaping we covered our side of the culvert and life was good. In 2002 - the elderly couple sold their home and things seemed to be going fine. However in 2011 - someone on the city council asked us if we realized the our neighbors were complaining to the city council that we had filled in the culvert and block the water drainage. The was 33 yrs after it was filled in initially, 23 years after we built our home, and 9 years after the neighbor bought their home. The neighbor never contacted us and when we heard this my husband and I both went over and tried to discuss this with him to see if we could get it resolved. He did not even want to talk with us and we honestly are very nice and easy going people. So basically that ended all conversation. In the spring of 2013 - this neighbor knocked in the top of the old culvert and ran his sump pump hose all the way around from the back of his house to the front and placed the hose in the culvert. This culvert if it was opened would drain into the middle of our front yard. We contacted the city and they did ask him to remove the hose- which he did for awhile but then put it back into the culvert again. In June of 2014 - we received well over 10 inches of rain over a few days- over half the town had water in their basements but this neighbor did not. We actually were able to keep up with our sump pump but unfortunately the sewer backed up and we did get some of that (wonder if neighbors had his sump pump draining into sewer). So since then we have had engineers involved; several lawyers (city, theirs, and finally we had to get one), and this has just ballooned out of control. This past June we just wanted to get this resolved so we met with the mayor and signed an agreement that a new culvert could be built from the low point in his front lawn, under the road and come out to the side of our property. This agreement also had that our neighbor could "grade" from his driveway across his front lawn (on the city's right of way) and end up no closer that 10 feet from culvert which is all on the city's right of way. So city put in culvert and 2 weeks later this neighbor put tiling in across his front lawn and has it open (drain opening) within 2 feet of culvert. He also lined the culvert opening area with plastic and laid stone so it could not drain into the soil there. I really think this is in violation of our agreement but now the mayor says he cannot do anything about it. All during this process we were told we had blocked the "natural flow of water" when we built our home but I truly do not understand how we blocked it if the water problem is more in his back yard and his house (with basement) is in the way. Plus a road. My brother is a civil engineer and he kept saying that this is such a joke because it has more do to with maybe his foundation and tiling around house that water drainage issue. When I did ask the owners for 1977 about water problems when they owned the home, he stated that the person that build the house put the drainage tile on the inside of the footings and that they had water and dampness in that home prior to selling and it was noted on their contract. Anyway - advice? Is there a statute of limitation with water issues, is a culvert more for surface water than natural water flow under the ground, or is there anything else we can use to get them to dig up this tiling and get back to the agreement we all signed. This is making my husband and myself so upset - and we really cannot afford paying an attorney for everything. sorry this is so long but so frustrated Thank you | |
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small rural town with drainage issues out of control
